DC03 - Though Mountains Fall (24 page)

T
he party died instantly. As soon as the federales left, everyone gathered up their children and hurried off toward home, heads down. Kyra and Miriam helped Father Noceda into the house and sat him at the kitchen table to bandage his head. Emma and Levi stayed to clean up the mess in the yard.

By the time Emma and Levi came into the house the priest was looking better. There was blood all over his cassock, but at least his face was clean and his head bandaged.

Levi sat across the table from him. “Señor Noceda,” he said, and it was no surprise to Emma that Levi would refuse to call a Catholic priest
father
, “a question is in my mind. I saw what that soldier did, how he talked to you, and it was like he was already mad at you before he got here. Why does he hate you so bad?”

Father Noceda didn’t answer, but Emma saw him avert his eyes from Levi as if he were hiding something.

Domingo straightened up from stoking the little stove, for the evening was growing cold. When he turned around there was a grin on his face.

“It’s a good story, Father,” Domingo said, seating himself at the end of the table. “You should tell them.”

Father Noceda shook his head. “Captain Soto doesn’t need an excuse to pick on a priest,” he said, “and at the moment I’m trying very hard not to hate my enemies.”

Domingo nodded. “But you have to admit you gave him a reason to dislike you.”

Father Noceda shrugged as Miriam set a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. She caught Levi’s eye and raised a cup, but he shook his head. Rules.

“That wasn’t me,” Noceda said. “It was the hand of God. All I did was laugh at him, but Captain Soto is a little man, and I should have known it would make him crazy.”

He took a sip of coffee and told the story to Levi.

“They came the morning after the long rain when I went to the church to see if there was any damage. Captain Soto rode through with his patrol at the same time, and when he saw me he decided to have a little fun.”

Noceda ticked his clerical collar with a forefinger. “Soto doesn’t need much of an excuse to torment a priest—the collar is fair game these days. But we were lucky. On the morning the soldiers came, the church was full of beans.”

Levi’s brow furrowed. “Beans?”

“Sí. Levi, you were the one who stored Domingo’s beans in your loft, weren’t you?”

“Sí, that was me.”

“Well, a lot of the farmers in the village brought their beans to the church that same night. We cleared everything out of the church, and they worked all night, just like you did, hauling their vines into the empty building. Captain Soto and his men found me at the doors of the church the morning after the rain stopped. They surrounded me with their horses, laughing, threatening.”

“Cowards,” Domingo said, “threatening a priest.”

Noceda raised an eyebrow. “You would be surprised, Domingo. There was a time when I would have thrashed them all, but that was another life. Now I try to live at peace with all men. Even morons. Captain Soto told me he had heard there was a new
iglesia
in San Rafael, and how very fortunate he was to find me there because he was in need of a warehouse to store all the grain he had ‘bought’ from the farmers in Paradise Valley.

“I said to the captain, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is
already
a warehouse. Your godless presidente might be happy for you to steal the property of the church, but to confiscate a warehouse owned by a Mexican citizen might end with you in prison.’

“The captain grew very angry then, and said he would burn my church with me in it. He jumped down from his horse, knocked me out of the way and flung the bar from the big double doors.”

Noceda grinned, remembering. “There were many wagonloads of bean vines piled inside the church, and they must have shifted during the storm because when that little worm threw the doors wide a mountain of vines collapsed right on top of him. Knocked him flat in the mud and covered him from head to toe. It was like a miracle—the hand of God. Soto was cursing and screaming, his men slipping and falling in the mud while they tried to dig him out. I think perhaps it was the funniest thing I have ever seen. I laughed until my sides hurt.”

“Even Soto’s men were laughing about it,” Domingo said. “I heard the story from soldiers who came here for beans.”

Levi frowned. “They took your beans?”

“Only a hundred pounds or so,” Domingo said. “We have plenty more, but I was trying to make them last because by the end of winter there will be people in the village who have none. Many of them lost their whole crop in the long rain.”

“Soldiers must eat an awful lot,” Emma said. “Two weeks ago they came and took Ira’s prize pig.”

Levi nodded. “It was the one he was fattening up for Christmas, too. Ira was spitting mad. But I still don’t see why they would take your church. They already have the stone church in El Prado.”

“They wanted a warehouse,” Noceda said. “But the federales have to be careful who they steal from. They can take a bag of beans from a Mexican national, but not a warehouse. They can only confiscate something like that from the church.”

“That’s not right,” Levi said. “Why doesn’t somebody do something?”

Father Noceda twisted his tin cup on the table, staring at it. “They will,” he said. “Rome has been too quiet in the face of this assault, and so have the cardinals. Sooner or later the people will rise up. There are already rumors among some of the village priests. But the time is not yet right, so we must not speak of these things.”

Rachel kept herself busy through the winter months, doing chores, doing what she could to prepare for the wedding, and going to the post office every day. Jake wrote her at least twice a week, sometimes more, and she lived for his letters. His father knew his plans but still refused to let him return to Mexico until the day he became his own man.

“If you die down there,” Jonas Weaver said, “I don’t want it on
my
conscience.”

More than once, when Rachel went to town in the late afternoon, she saw Atlee Hostetler or his buggy somewhere near the old church.

Harvey and Leah usually went with her, and Leah noticed,
too. “Why would he want to be around those soldiers?” she asked. “I just don’t understand it.”

“Mescal,” Harvey said, holding the reins as they headed out of town. “Maybe tequila, too.”

Leah shuddered, remembering her brush with the troops. “Well, he must want it awful bad if he’s willing to spend time with
those
animals. I hate the way they leer at us.”

“Jah, me too, but I won’t be making this trip much longer,” Rachel said. “It’ll just be the two of you then.”

Leah’s head tilted. “Why won’t you be going to town anymore?”

A shrug. “Jake comes back in six weeks—late March. When he gets here I won’t have to go to town to look for his letters, will I?”

Harvey grinned mischievously. “
That’s
why you’ve been doing so much sewing. You’ve got plans.”

Rachel kept her eyes on the road, her expression blank. “Hush,” she said.

———

The days dragged by, and she tried not to think about Jake more than once every minute or two because it seemed to make time stop. But in late March, when the swifts came to roost and the clover was just starting to sprout little magenta buds, the big day arrived.

Long before daylight her father hitched the Belgians to the wagon. He wouldn’t be taking the buggy because Abe Detweiler was bringing a few farm implements with him and the buggy wasn’t big enough.

When he got there Rachel was already in the barn, dressed and ready.

“We’re late,” she said. “We should already be on the road.”

Dat gave her a sideways glance, straightening out the harness.

“We? Who said you were going?”

“Dat, you can’t be serious.”

“You have chores.”

“Done,” she said. She’d been at it since three.

“I don’t see how three grown men are going to need your help loading Abe’s planter.”

She almost started to cry, but then he leaned so close to her face that his hat brim touched her forehead. His eyes widened and he said, “I’m teasing you, child. Get in the wagon.”

The trip to Arteaga took forever. She’d never seen draft horses plod so, but they finally arrived.

And then they waited. The train was a half hour late. They dropped a few cars on a siding, and as her father pulled the wagon alongside, the door to a cattle car opened and there was Jake, waving.

And Abe Detweiler was with him.

Rachel could finally breathe. She hadn’t even realized how fearful she’d been, how doubtful that this day would actually come, that Jake and the bishop would both arrive and all would be right with the world. The hardest thing was shaking Jake’s hand. She wanted a hug, a great big, fierce welcome-home, oh-how-I-missed-you hug. She wanted to feel his arms around her, but it was broad daylight and they were in a railroad yard. Her father was there, and the bishop.

Her hand lingered in Jake’s a little too long, and a quick glance from her father made her flinch and let go, but Jake’s eyes spoke to her.

Wait,
they said.
Our moment will come.

She had the pleasure of riding all the way home in the back of the wagon with Jake while the bishop sat up on the bench with her father and talked.

Jake leaned close to her at the first opportunity and spoke
quietly. “If it’s all right with you, we’ll go talk to Bishop Detweiler after dark this Saturday, and we’ll publish on Sunday. Rachel, I don’t ever want to be apart from you again.”

Sunday. Today was Wednesday. Four days to the announcement, fifteen to the Thursday of the wedding. A rush of excitement went through her. She smiled, entwined her fingers with his, and with a cautionary glance at the men up front, gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“So tell me about these bandits,” Bishop Detweiler said as Caleb’s wagon rumbled southward on Saltillo Road. “I hear you got troops now.”

“Jah, and the troops got rid of the bandits all right.”

“That’s good.”

Caleb nodded thoughtfully. “Jah, I suppose it’s a good thing. But I once said the same to a Mexican named Paco. He told me the troops had arrived and I said it was a good thing. Now, Paco had just been shot through the arm by bandits, only minutes before, but when I said it was good the troops had come, he only said, ‘We will see.’ Those three words have haunted me ever since.”

The bishop frowned. “Is there a problem with the soldiers?”

“Several problems. First, the country is in turmoil and sometimes the troops don’t get the supplies they need, so they take them from the farmers—from us. When you add it up they take much more than the bandits ever did, except they have not killed any of us. Yet.”

“Like what? What do they take?”

“Horses, grain, pigs, chickens, eggs, milk, butter. They patrol the valley every day, grazing their horses in our fields, and when vegetables are in season they trample our kitchen gardens.”

“They don’t pay?”

Caleb shrugged. “They pay for the horses, but less than half of what they’re worth. Only a few weeks ago they came and took four more horses from the valley. They said some of the ponies they captured from the bandits died over the winter, so they came to us and got good, solid standard-bred horses for the price of a broken-down old paint. But it looks like a good year for foals, so maybe we’ll make do in the long run.”

The bishop thought about all this for a minute and then said, “What else? You said there were other problems.”

“They’re violent men, Abe. Hard men who lie and steal and don’t think twice about killing a man. They killed all of the bandits who fought them at El Prado. Every one of them. I watched them shoot the wounded with my own eyes, and afterwards they hung the prisoners. They took over the Catholic church in El Prado—put the priest out in the street and
laughed
about it. Their captain has no respect for Gott. No respect for anything. To my eyes, the only difference between a bandit and a soldier is the uniform.”